101 Cars, Part 75… What’s the Vector, Victor?

When I was a kid, there was one car that took “Bad Ass” to a whole new level. Forget the Lamborgini Countach and anything coming from Ferrari… The car that took the look straight to “fighter plane on the street” was the Vector W2 Twin Turbo. Never mind that it started and failed more times than a beat up VW Bug… They were COOL.

I can still remember the road test of a pre-production car by one of the magazines back in the early 1980s mentioning that top spped in 1st gear was 90mph… 2nd gear was 155mph… 3rd gear was 220mph… and that was as many gears as there were. It was powered by an American GM 350 putting out 650hp. In those days, that was astounding.

And it looked like it should be shooting the other cars off the road.

The look hasn’t calmed down in the last 25+ years… if anything it is even more slickly sinister. And despite the rarity, I ran across one in a gas station. There was a cop there looking at it… and it was fun telling him that the helicopters in the department couldn’t keep up with it…